I never thought I’d be doing art criticism in one of my columns. Recent controversy surrounding advertisements for Israeli Apartheid Week, organized by Duke Students for Justice in Palestine (DSJP) (of which, I’m a member), however, has made me one lucky humanities student.
When I first saw the poster, its representations and implications were abundantly clear. I saw a Palestinian woman disappointedly, but calmly plucking an Israeli soldier from a tank. Her black skirt is stylized to include the outlines of many faces, representing the collective power of nonviolent resistance to a brutal military occupation. The woman dwarfs the soldier and even the tank, a testament to her true power in the face of military aggression. Structural and systematic forms of oppression and discrimination, represented by Israel’s separation wall in the backdrop, loom large but we are given the hope that they, too, will be overcome.
The red and black of the woman’s dress easily identify it as the traditional Palestinian thawb. Once a costume associated with Palestinian peasants and Bedouins, the thawb has become a representation of cultural heritage and an assertion of national identity. The presence of a tank is closely associated with disproportionate force of the Israeli military power. The wall and the tile “Israeli Apartheid Week” give the images their immediate context. The very presence of the woman is a cue to women’s increasing role in the public sphere of Palestinian society, especially in nonviolent resistance. For instance in Budrus, Palestinians and Israeli activists made the conscious decision to collectively and nonviolently resist to prevent the separation wall running right through their village.
Of course I didn’t expect everyone to make all of those associations upon a single glance, but I was surprised just how many of the cues were missed and how varied the interpretations of the art were. I was hurt that my fellow students, instead of assuming there was a misunderstanding and seeking clarification, would rather assume that a group was anti-Semitic.
More than anything, the responses indicate that I had underestimated the need for Israeli Apartheid Week on Duke’s campus. I had underestimated just how under-informed the general population was about Palestine/Israel.
I also underestimated the power of art, in this case political art (or protest art or propaganda or agitprop), to elicit strong responses and to give insights into humanity. The reaction to the art speaks to sentiments already present in our society. Consider how quickly the conversation turned from the question of Israel as an apartheid state to the representation of a woman on a poster. Now consider the suffering of women in political conflicts all across the globe, how quickly a conflict over ownership of land becomes a competition over ownership of women’s bodies.
The offense came long before any flyer was posted. In gaining recognition for DSJP, some Duke Student Government senators took offense to the word “Palestine” in the title of the group. For some, the very existence of the Palestinian people and the possibility of legitimate political representation of those people is offensive, threatening or, at the very least, uncomfortable.
Education is a very strong political force. In fact, one of the reasons art is such a powerful political tool is its ability to teach us, especially in the conversations and investigations it inspires.
Our schooling is one of our most intimate political experiences. Our time at Duke is largely defined by the space we share, the people we share it with and the information we pass along. Disruptions of the regular order, through protest or through art, force us to become aware of our own place in the scheme of things. A poster or a film or a poem can make us acutely aware of the suffering of the Palestinian people: the displacement, the intimidation, the demolition of homes, the lack of free movement, the second class citizenship—all going on for more than half a century.
“The first mistake,” a friend of mine told me in discussing the controversy this week “is that someone thought putting art on a flyer was a good idea.” If all that arose from this week was misunderstanding and pain, I might have agreed. But what we also gained from this week was a reassessment of our own existence in relation to others’ suffering. Sometimes that happens in a lecture, and sometimes it happens as a result of art. The truth is the two aren’t as far apart as we may think they are. One thing I am sure of is that I won’t stop singing freedom songs anytime soon. A Palestinian folk song says it better than I ever could, “The bird cries when it is thrown out of its nest so how is the homeland that has its own people?”
Ahmad Jitan is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Thursday. Follow Ahmad on Twitter @AhmadJitan
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